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The Picnic 05/24/02 (Originally ran 09/21/01)
I could tell you how
to get there, but that would only help. I could tell you to fly into
a town where they say the blues is in trouble (where they say all
the younger set are going so heavily for the hip hop and it's hard,
they say, to get people to support basic blues). You get in a car
and you drive south. You go from a big road...to a little road, to
an even smaller road. And just when you're about to give yourself
up for lost, when you're looking around like you're in another country --
you're there.
Only you're not, because I can give you directions, and you'll
arrive at Otha Turner's picnic -- the last of the great picnics --
but, that's really only half of what you need.
Here, let me show you what I mean.
You drive these roads and you get there early. You find Otha Turner's
farm -- see, his house, which is not a trailer like the ones next door,
but a house that stands in front of a pig pen and a caged, wailing
hound dog, and the spot where they'll kill, skin and barbecue two
goats in the morning. Behind the house there's an older white man;
he used to be a Mississippi highway patrolman, he tells you, and
this is his first picnic, too. He's just gotten there -- just backed
his huge Ford F250 into Otha's yard and unloaded the pipes, the
tarps, the rope to make a tent. No rain, Mr. Otha says, NO RAIN
is going to EVER going to cancel a picnic.
So you stand in the drizzle and you help assemble this tent. And
you try not to think about this state trooper, this good Samaritan,
this man, this white lawman, who may or may not have fought in America's
second Civil War -- who may or may not still be fighting. This man,
this generous man, who will tell you, in just a few hours, to look
at that woman over there. When the light hits her just right and
you get her in just right profile, doesn't she look exactly like
Whoopie Goldberg?
No. Put that out of your mind. Move out from under the tent toward
this other man, this black man with short white hair and a blue
mesh cap, overalls and a flannel. He's walking toward the overhang,
and he swaggers. He moves with the strength and confidence of a
man who has worked the land hard his whole life. He's shaven, though
how he works the razor between those deep lines in his face is a
mystery. He's got silver-blue eyes and, when the light hits them
just right, and he's staring straight at you, they reflect. They
stare right through you.
In a few seconds, he'll start telling you a story, and you'll
start to believe. Everything you've heard about Otha Turner is
true. Otha Turner, the last of the fife players; Otha Turner, former
share cropper; America's last living link to a culture that, like
him at 94 years old, simply and stubbornly refuses to die.
Otha Turner and his Rising Star Fife and Drum band have two records.
David Katznelson's the label exec. He says the music will get to
you like it got to him. He says of the music, "It's transcendent, and
when you first hear it, it sounds great -- and the second time you
hear it, it sounds great."
Back in sharecropping days, the picnics were held during the lay-by -- that's
after you've done all your planting and sowing and cultivating, when
you just have to wait for the cotton or the corn to grow. So, there's nothing
else to do -- why not have a party? Why not invite everybody, from
everywhere? Why not bang on that big bass drum which, in the days
before all this noise we're so used to now, you could hear for miles.
Otha Turner says the picnics were competitive. You'd throw one
and then I'd throw one, and mine better be better than yours. These
days, however, Otha Turner takes first prize every time. Because
just like he's got the last Fife and Drum band, he also has the
last picnic.
The purists will tell you that it's getting too big -- that the
200 people crammed in behind Otha Turner's house and the pig pen, about half from out of town -- those are mostly white -- and the
rest from round the area, mostly black. The "purists"
will tell you that it's getting diluted. But, like the college girl
who threatened to trip me if I didn't have Otha's permission to
record, most of the "purists" are at their first, second
or third picnic themselves. And, more than that, most of these complainers
aren't even dancing.
First, you start to understand Otha -- so you know what he means
when he says: "Something that you can do that the people like it.
I think it's low-down aggravating you don't do it..."
Somewhere near Senatobia, Miss., on the edge of the hill
country, I'm Benjamin Adair for The Savvy Traveler.
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